Sports and recreation

The Irish are avid sports fans, especially of their native games of Gaelic football—a cross between football (soccer) and rugby—and hurling, which resembles a rough-and-tumble version of field hockey. Both are promoted by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA; Cumann Lúthchleas), founded in 1884 to revive native Irish sports. Today there are several hundred thousand members of the GAA who play these games as amateurs, and the professional teams compete in the All-Ireland matches that draw huge crowds to Dublin’s Croke Park. Handball is also a traditional Irish sport.

Football and rugby are widely popular, often played in sold-out stadiums in Dublin. In 1990 the national football team reached the quarterfinals in the World Cup, and Irish players are prominent on the rosters of professional teams throughout the world. The Irish are extremely passionate about horse racing, and the Irish Derby draws Europe’s best competitors to The Curragh, the flat racetrack in County Kildare. Greyhound racing at Shelbourne Park in Dublin is also well attended. In bicycling, Dubliner Steven Roche won the Tour de France and the World Championship in 1987.

The Olympic Council of Ireland was formed in 1922, and Ireland’s official participation in the Olympic Games began in Paris in 1924. (Irish athletes had competed for Great Britain in previous games, since 1896.) Since then Ireland has missed only the 1936 games. The first medal by an Irishman came in 1896, when John Boland won a gold medal in tennis for Great Britain. The first medal for the Irish team came in 1928 in Amsterdam, where Patrick O’Callaghan won a gold in the hammer throw. In 1996Michelle Smith became the first Irish female athlete to win a gold medal, capturing three gold medals in swimming, though she was later banned for four years from competition after being found guilty of manipulating a drug-test sample. Four years later distance runner Sonia O’Sullivan won a silver medal in the 5,000-metre event at the 2000 Olympic Games. Irish competitors won five medals in the 2012 London Olympics, including Katie Taylor, who won a gold medal in women’s boxing.

Media and publishing

Several daily newspapers are published in Ireland, including some that have a national circulation. Leading dailies include the Irish Independent and The Irish Times of Dublin and the Irish Examiner of Cork. There also are a large number of regional weekly papers. Dublin is the centre of the publishing industry, and nearly all of the republic’s periodicals are based there.

RTÉ, the national state-owned radio and television broadcaster, began radio service in 1926 and television service in 1961. A second RTÉ national television channel, RTÉ 2, was launched in 1978. RTÉ is financed by revenue from license fees and advertising and is governed by the government-appointed RTÉ Authority. There is an extensive independent radio network with many privately owned stations; an independent Irish-language television station, TG4 (Teilifís na Gaeilge), was established in 1996. The population also receives broadcasts from the United Kingdom and other European countries and can subscribe to cable and satellite services. In 1998 a privately owned commercial television channel, TV3, commenced operations; in 2008 it acquired Channel 6, another privately owned channel that had begun broadcasting in 2006, and subsequently rebranded it as 3e. The regulation of television broadcasting is one of the responsibilities of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.

Ireland, lying to the west of Britain, has always been to some extent cut off by it from direct contact with other European countries, especially those from Sweden to the Rhine River. Readier access has been through France, Spain, and Portugal and even Norway and Iceland. Internally, the four ecclesiasticalprovinces into which Ireland was divided in the 12th century realistically denoted the main natural divisions of the country. Of these, the north had in the earliest times been culturally connected with Scotland, the east with Roman Britain and Wales, the south with Wales and France, and the southwest and west with France and Spain. In later times, despite political changes, these associations continued in greater or lesser degree.

The position of Ireland, geographically peripheral to western Europe, became “central” and thus potentially more important once Europe’s horizons expanded in the 15th and 16th centuries to include the New World. Paradoxically it was in the earlier period that Ireland won particular fame as a notable and respected centre of Christianity, scholarship, and the arts. After the Middle Ages, subjugation to Britain stultified—or the struggle for freedom absorbed—much of Ireland’s native energy. But its influence was always exercised as much through its emigrants as in its achievements as a nation. During the centuries of British occupation the successors of the great missionaries and scholars who had fostered Christianity and learning among the Germanic peoples of the European continent from the 7th to 9th century were those who formed a considerable element in the armies and clergy of Roman Catholic countries and had an incalculable influence on the later development of the United States. Throughout history innumerable people of Anglo-Irish origin or nurture have had a constant and profound influence, as statesmen or soldiers, on the history of both Ireland and Britain.

Early Ireland

The human occupation of Ireland did not begin until a late stage in the prehistory of Europe. It generally was held that the first arrivals to Ireland were Mesolithic hunter-fisher people, represented largely by flintwork found mainly in ancient beaches in the historic counties of Antrim, Down, Louth, and Dublin. These artifacts were named Larnian, after Larne, Northern Ireland, the site where they were first found; dates from 6000 bc onward were assigned to them. Archaeological work since World War II, however, casts considerable doubt on the antiquity and affinities of the people who were responsible for the Larnian industry; association with Neolithic remains suggests that they should be considered not as a Mesolithic people but rather as groups contemporary with the Neolithic farmers. The Larnian could then be interpreted as a specialized aspect of contemporary Neolithic culture. Lake and riverside finds, especially along the River Bann, show a comparable tradition. A single carbon-14 date of 5725 ± 110 bc from Toome Bay, north of Lough Neagh, for woodworking and flint has been cited in support of a Mesolithic phase in Ireland, but such a single date cannot be considered reliable.

The general pattern of carbon-14 date determinations suggests that the Neolithic Period (New Stone Age) in Ireland began about 3000 bc. As in Britain, the most widespread evidence of early farming communities is long-barrowburial. The main Irish long-barrow series consists of megalithictombs called court tombs because an oval or semicircular open space, or court, inset into the end of the long barrow precedes the burial chamber. There are more than 300 of these court tombs. They occur in the northern half of Ireland, and the distribution is bounded on the south by the lowlands of the central plain. Timber-built rectangular houses belonging to the court tomb builders have been discovered at Ballynagilly, County Tyrone, and at Ballyglass, County Mayo. The court tombs are intimately related to the British long-barrow series of the Severn-Cotswold and chalk regions and probably derive from more or less common prototypes in northwestern France.

In Ireland a second type of megalithic long barrow—the so-called portal tomb, of which there are more than 150 examples—developed from the court tomb. They spread across the court tomb area in the northern half of Ireland and extend into Leinster and Waterford and also to western Wales and Cornwall.

Another notable feature of the Irish Neolithic is the passage tomb. This megalithic tomb, unlike the long-barrow types, is set in a round mound, sited usually on a hilltop and grouped in cemeteries. The rich grave goods of these tombs include beads, pendants, and bone pins. Many of the stones of the tombs are elaborately decorated with engraved designs. The main axis of the distribution lies along a series of great cemeteries from the River Boyne to Sligo (Boyne and Loughcrew in County Meath, Carrowkeel and Carrowmore in County Sligo). Smaller groups and single tombs occur largely in the northern half of the country and in Leinster. A specialized group of later—indeed, advanced Bronze Age—date near Tramore, County Waterford, is quite similar to a large group on the Isles of Scilly and Cornwall. The great Irish passage tombs include some of the most magnificent megalithic tombs in all of Europe—for example, Newgrange and Knowth in Meath. While the passage tombs represent the arrival of the megalithic tradition in its fullest and most sophisticated form, the exact relation between the builders of these tombs and the more or less contemporary long-barrow builders is not clear. The passage tombs suggest rather more clearly integrated communities than do the long barrows.

To the final stage of the Neolithic probably belong the rich house sites of both rectangular and circular form at Lough Gur, County Limerick. The pottery shows a strong connection with the tradition of the long barrow (court tomb and portal tomb).

Two great incursions establish the early Bronze Age in Ireland. One, represented by approximately 400 megalithic tombs of the wedge tomb variety, is associated with Beaker pottery. This group is dominant in the western half of the country. Similar tombs also associated with Beaker finds are common in the French region of Brittany, and the origin of the Irish series is clearly from this region. In Ireland the distribution indicates that these tomb builders sought well-drained grazing land, such as the Burren limestones in Clare, and also copper deposits, such as those on the Cork-Kerry coast and around the Silvermines area of Tipperary.

In contrast, in the eastern half of the country a people in the single-burial tradition dominate. Their burial modes and distinctive pottery, known as food vessels, have strong roots in the Beaker tradition that dominates in many areas of western Europe. They may have reached Ireland via Britain from the lowland areas around the Rhine or farther north.

Throughout the early Bronze Age Ireland had a flourishing metal industry, and bronze, copper, and gold objects were exported widely to Britain and the Continent. In the middle Bronze Age (about 1500 bc) new influences brought urn burial into eastern Ireland. From about 1200 bc elements of a late Bronze Age appear, and by about 800 bc a great late Bronze Age industry was established. A considerable wealth of bronze and gold is present, an example of which is the great Clare gold hoard. Nordic connections have been noted in much of this metalwork.

The period of the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age in Ireland is fraught with uncertainties. The problem of identifying archaeological remains with language grouping is notoriously difficult, but it seems likely that the principal Celtic arrivals occurred in the Iron Age. Irish sagas, which probably reflect the pagan Irish Iron Age, reveal conditions in many respects similar to the descriptions of the ancient Classical authors, such as Poseidonius and Julius Caesar. The Celts were an Indo-European group who are thought to have originated in the 2nd millennium bc, probably in east-central Europe. They were among the earliest to develop an Iron Age culture, as has been found at Hallstatt, Austria (c. 700 bc). Although there is little sign of Hallstatt-like culture in Ireland, the later La Tène culture (which may date in Ireland from 300 bc or earlier) is represented in metalwork and some stone sculpture, mainly in the northern half of the country. Connections with northern England are apparent. Hill fort building seems also characteristic of the Iron Age.